Caesura Literary Magazine

caesura, n.1. A pause in a line of verse dictated by sense or natural speech rhythm rather than by metrics.2. The University of Delaware's student literary magazine.

Welcome to Caesura, a student literary magazine for creative writing and artwork at the University of Delaware. We publish short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction, drama, and artwork from UD's undergraduates. Submissions are selected and edited by an all-student staff. Our faculty advisors are Professors Michael McCamley and Ashley Pigford, and our editor-in-chief is English graduate student Amelia Chaney. Caesura is made possible through the generous support of the Gregory family, who honor their mother Elda Wollaeger Gregory's love of creative writing.

Follow Caesura on Facebook and Twitter (@UDCaesura) to keep up with deadlines, staff meetings, and more.

Submission Guidelines

We
are currently accepting submissions for Caesura! We are
looking for submissions in creative nonfiction, poetry, fiction, and drama! Feel free
to give us more than one submission.

These guidelines are for authors and artists who want to submit to the magazine. Only current University of Delaware students may submit work for consideration. Please follow the guidelines closely: failure to do so may result in the rejection of your submission.

The deadline for all submissions is December 3, 2014. NOTE: Submissions after the deadline will not be considered.

Caesura accepts submissions to the following categories:

Fiction: Short pieces up to 5 pages long (single-spaced). Stories must be works of fiction and can be on any topic. (For essays or memoirs, please submit to Creative Nonfiction.) You may submit up to 3 stories (including any submitted to Creative Nonfiction).

Poetry: Poetry on any topic, in any style (sonnet, free verse, etc.) Please do not send poems longer than 2 pages. Please put all poems in separate files and provide titles (otherwise we have to assume the first line is the title). You may submit up to 5 poems.

Creative Nonfiction: Non-fiction includes creative essays and memoirs. (Fictional pieces should be submitted to Fiction, not this category.) Pieces should not be more than 5 pages long (single-spaced). You may submit up to 3 pieces (including any submitted to Fiction).

Drama: You may submit up to two ten-minute or one-act plays. Pieces should not be more than 5 pages single-spaced.

Artwork: You may submit up to 3 artwork pieces. Artwork takes mainly photography, but will consider other 2-D media (paint, charcoal, pencil, etc.) including graphic art and comic strips. All submissions must be black-and-white or gray-scale (our magazine does not print in color). Also, images should be:

300 dpi at 100 percent size; in other words, if an image is 4x6, it should be 300 dpi at 4x6. Pixel dimensions should be a minimum of (width) 1800 pixels by (height) 2700 pixels.

.tif file type

Finally, please present your work professionally. Spelling and grammar mistakes make your work difficult to read and can result in its rejection, even if the content is good. Caesura staff are not here to proofread your pieces. Please make sure your work is in its best shape when you submit it. We look forward to reading your work!!

How to Submit

Please put all stories, poems, and art pieces in SEPARATE files with the titles as their file names. Do NOT put your name in the file name or the document itself (we do all selection of submissions anonymously). All writing submissions must be in Word documents. Attach all files to an email to caesuraUD@gmail.com. For pieces to be considered all submissions must be sent from a UD email address.

In the body of the email please include:

Your full name

Your contact information

The titles of all your pieces

Indicate which category EACH PIECE belongs in. (Failure to do so can result in problems with fiction and nonfiction getting mixed up, esp.)

Judging and Awards

All submissions are discussed anonymously by the Caesura staff. If your work is selected to be published, you will be notified by email. Published creative writing and artwork submissions are eligible for prizes, which will be awarded at The Gregory Family Celebration of Creative Writing held annually each spring. The awards are:

The Elda Wollaeger Gregory Poetry AwardTwo prizes, $500 each

The Thomas W. Molyneux Prose AwardFirst Prize: $300Second Prize: $200

Caesura Art Award: $100

The American Academy of Poets Prize: $100

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Join the Caesura Staff!

Do you love creative writing? Do you enjoy discussing poetry, short stories, artwork, and creative essays? If so, Caesura wants you! We select, edit, and publish student work from all over campus, and we're looking for enthusiastic editors and artists with sharp eyes for talented writing and artwork.

You don't have to be an English major or a writer to join. New editorial voices are always needed, no matter what your background. We especially need skilled Visual Communications majors to help design the edition and to help us review the artwork submissions that come in. For more information on being on the design team, contact Professor Ashley Pigford.

The benefits that you will receive from contributing to the Caesura staff are numerous. Besides meeting new creative, interesting, and dedicated people, you will gain experience as an editor or designer. We also have readings of our own personal work as a staff group, giving us all a chance to share and discuss our writing. Additionally, being involved in a publication looks great on job résumés and graduate school applications!

The Caesura staff's main jobs are to select submissions for publication and edit the copy. Early in the fall we focus on advertising for submissions. Once submissions start coming in, we discuss them during staff meetings or online, depending on the preference of each department. Caesura is broken up into four departments: Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction (essays and memoirs), and Art. You can be involved in multiple departments, and you can also submit to the magazine even as an editor, as long as you don't submit to whatever department you are a part of (to be fair).

Department heads decide for their own departments how often they will meet and to what degree they will employ online discussion tools. Head editors have more frequent meetings to discuss policies and the magazine timeline. The entire staff, due to size and scheduling conflicts, usually only meets all together at our staff readings and at the end of the school year at the proofing stage and presentation of the finished magazine.